Startup the lights, antagonists!
let there be Music!
the Dance of Death commenced to the sound
of a cacophonous piano
brilliantly commingling variations to Salieri.
as the tempo accelerated unwaveringly,
Mozart kept flooring the piano pedals
as if they belonged on a priceless car.
his diminutive skull and compact hands
alternately rising and falling,
he guzzled from an empty bottle,
cackling, basking in the luminescence
of lanterns supplied by the archangels,
spilling over the entire gambling hall.

Clapping their metacarpals and phalanges
this crepitation lent rhythm to the eerie waltz,
fellow artists, write!
compose an ode, dancing to the rhythm with such skill!
get your bones clapping and your pens scraping,
smear the ink across your cranial bones!
here we are, performing for you the Dance of Death –
perform for us the story of a life!
bring out your musty quills,
ladies and gentlemen and with those marvellous
brains of yours – laden with letters, quills, brushes and paints
as they all undoubtedly are – highlight the wax figures’ tragedies.
grant them minuscule lampion houses to cram their meek lives into, dress them in patchwork quilts or golden harem pants;
make them heroes or cowards, thieves, traitors,
moralists and decent folk.